


slants of light, a glimpse into the dark

by mitochondriencocktail



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: I'm so drunk right now pls don't expect a lot forom me, Introspection, M/M, Snippets, Soulmates, it's weird and experimental bear me with, multidimensional, sort of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:25:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12191664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitochondriencocktail/pseuds/mitochondriencocktail
Summary: He’s Richard. He’s Richard. He’s Richard.





	slants of light, a glimpse into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> whoa nelly bear with me  
> sorry for mistakes and lack of WUALTIY.  
> have a beer on me

He posits that if you’re falling through a thousand different worlds, chances are you’ll find at least one thing that makes you want to stay in each one. A thousand different lives; multifaceted like crystal prisms that blow beams of rainbow light onto your bedroom wall, some brighter than others, some bigger in their arcs against the eggshell white walls next to a — it’s a banner of some sort, he thinks.

He squints to make it out, but it’s a smudge in his vision, just brightly colored smoke that he can’t reach yet. 

There’s an attack on the castle walls and he’s told to flee. The mages get first warning and then the word spreads down along the chain of command like a crystalline spiderweb. Titus Ursus flicks his wrist to spark a fire in the palm of his hand and startles in the corridor.

“Lucius,” he says, staring through the dark and into brilliantly bright blue eyes. They’re wide with fear and Titus’ chest leaps at the proximity. Lucius stands nearly a half a foot taller than him, towering, and has his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I’ve been told to escort you, sir.”

Titus nods, bites his lips. He lets Lucius lead the way.

He’s always been an odd man; inquisitive about the workings of mages, wholly supportive in a way that many others of the lower classes never truly are, and — and Titus gets it. His kind isn’t — they aren’t always the kindest. Don’t have the best reputations and Titus can’t help where he’s been placed in society’s hierarchy.

But he’s — there’s always been Lucius, at least. With his tomes of poetry and gentle demeanor and — Titus shivers, recalling the time he stumbled upon Lucius out by the lake shirtless. Warming himself under the shade of an oak tree.

Titus bumps into Lucius’ shoulder and a hand grips his own.

“There’s someone around the corner,” he whispers. From the sound of it, it’s more than just a someone. There are several someones and the castle foundation is rumbling with the effort of a battering ram against some wall, no doubt. It’s a lost cause.

Titus lets the flame in the palm of his hand fade, and he pulls Lucius towards him. The last beat of light between them reveals devoted eyes and a wavering smile. 

Titus tastes blood not for the first time in his life, but for certainly the last. 

— 

Calum’s parents are getting a divorce and Drew wishes he could stop it. Not because — not because Calum’s parents were particularly very good together (they fought a  _ lot _ whenever Drew was over to play), but he notices in the way only a best friend does that Calum seems… he’s more tired lately. Quieter. 

He’s stopped telling Drew about the birds he sees in his backyard and not even — not even Drew’s stupid (he can hear his mom scolding him for using that word) favorite Godzilla action figure is cheering Calum up.

He throws it across the playground and it lands — it lands somewhere. He doesn’t care. Stupid. It’s stupid. Who needs it anyways because Calum is moving to fucking (now his mom is really yelling at him in his head) Minnesota with his dad. 

Calum doesn’t even like his dad.

His dad’s scary. Big. Too loud for Calum.

Drew walks over to the house next door to say goodbye, but — he’s gone. Calum’s gone already. The stupid summer cicadas scream for him and he kicks over a potted plant with one velcro sneaker and it’s not — none of it’s fair. It’s not fair. That was  _ his _ best friend. Calum was his best friend.

Years later, sometimes when he’s fifteen, sometimes when he’s twenty-four, sometimes when he’s thirty-seven, Drew thinks about Calum. Hopes he’s doing well. Wonders where he is. On rare occasions, he’ll even dream about him; thrust back to the safety of childhood nostalgia and ill-defined schoolyard crushes that he can’t — Drew doesn’t want to really dwell on that. So he doesn’t.

It could be said that Calum would do the same, reminisce about the past, of his life in Colorado, but he finds that it’s hard to dream when you’re dead.

Drew doesn’t need to know that though.

Calum’s just happy to watch from a distance.

— 

“So, you’re a human?” he asks, pretty blue eyes sparkling like the clear sky above. His tail skims absentmindedly over the murky waves. 

Wes never thought about wanting to fuck a mermaid — er, uh, merman — before, but here he is. “Uh, yeah,” he says, nodding. His feet dangle in the water and it’s cool to the touch, refreshing under the harsh whip of the sun and the hot stone beneath him. 

He — the goddamn merman — is perched with his arms crossed on the rock by Wes’ legs, head resting on his forearms. Experimentally, he nudges Wes’ leg, a not quite accident with accidentally sad eyes. 

“I should get going,” he says, and Wes’ mouth twitches, almost saying something, but not quite able to. Wes just nods. Stupidly. What was he thinking? This would — on the off chance he’s not knocked out in some ditch hallucinating, this would never, uh. Well it just wouldn’t really work.

The nameless merman slips off the rock and submerges himself in the water, disappearing with a final wide-eyed glance in Wes’ direction.

He sits there for a lump sum of time he isn’t wholly sure of, but taking the setting sun into account and the levels of the tide, it’s been, well, a long while. Wes never sees him — the goddamn merman — again. At least not outside the pages of the novel he scrawls away at in the confines of his seaside cottage.

It gets — he’s lonely sometimes, but that’s part of the life he’s chosen, he thinks. A hermit. A writer. 

He glances outside the window now and again and wonders what else may lay out there.

— 

“I have to go, you know that.”

A hand wraps itself around Charlie's’ neck and pulls him in for a not-quite-kiss. A hovering of lips over another pair of lips that happen to be his and Mike’s. If they’re caught even like this, the consequences would be severe. 

“Why?” Charlie demands, not letting go, but not pushing any closer. “You could — we could just escape to the mountains up north. Nobody would know and — and —” the idea is spiralling in his head now, building momentum until it becomes too weighty, too gigantic and unwieldy. He digs his fingers into Mike’s shirt. 

Years wasted; hemming and hawing, dancing around what was right in front of him. 

“I’m engaged, Charlie,” he says. The words never hurt any less. “I made a promise to her.”

Charlie slowly lets go, letting Mike pull away. Letting him slip into the shadows of the cottage until he’s backed away towards the door. “I have to go, Charlie.” His face is obscured half in shadow, and burns half in the dying fire.

Charlie doesn’t say anything. He lets him go.

— 

He’s Richard. He’s Richard. He’s Richard. 

He — Richard — tells himself this as he lunges face first into a toilet bowl and pukes his guts out. Bile tainted with bitter stomach acid and too many goddamn tequila shots splashes into the bowl and he wants to scream. Maybe cry. Pound his fists on the gross bathroom floor of this — this shitty hotel that he didn’t even wanna be at for some conference he doesn’t even care about.

Someone’s hoisting him up and the room is spinning and he’s gripping onto someone — tall. It’s Jared it’s Jared it’s Jared. He — Jared — is behind a steering wheel and they’re moving and Richard thinks he’s going to puke again so he opens the window and tries to scramble out through it and drown himself in the thick humid Palo Alto air, but Jared desperately pulls him back inside the car. He needs to get outside and — and, okay, he’s outside and Jared is still here. Still with him.

“Why?” Richard asks, slurs, drools a little bit. 

Jared stares down at him, blinks a little dumbly but not because he’s dumb because Richard’s the dumb one. Not that — Jared wouldn’t ever think that or say that, but Richard thinks it enough for himself. He’s the stupidest genius in this goddamn hellhole. “Let’s get you inside, Richard,” he says instead of a real answer and Richard takes it and is grateful.

Jared hands him his fourth glass of water of the night and Richard’s still staring at his wall. The Cruising poster, specifically. He doesn’t know  _ why _ he has that poster, really. It’s not his favorite film, isn’t even something he really remembers seeing. But it’s — it’s colorful. He wants to reach out and touch it, but it’s just so goddamn far away, so he doesn’t. Not right now, at least. Not with Jared right — right here. Against him. Warm. Solid. Tangible.

Their feet hang off the loft bed.

Richard hiccups. Closes his eyes. He feels almost disgustingly sober, but with the gross dredges of drunkenness still at the bottom of his cup.

Six years they’ve been at this — Pied Piper, Palo Alto, each other. Sort of. Kind of. Toeing the line of something that took Richard a while to fully culminate the idea of and it’s still — it’s still warm and wriggling and fresh out of the oven and he has the strangest fear that if tries to plunge into it, it’ll just — smoke. It’ll become smoke. Again.

Which, “Again,” is ridiculous because there hasn’t ever been a previous baseline to establish the existence of an “Again.” But that doesn’t stop the fear. 

There’s a prism that Richard stares at, hanging from the blinds by his window. It’s too dark for it now, but — sometimes — he likes to stare at it when he’s laying in bed. Watch the light break down into various paths and beams and — it’s pretty.

Jared’s pretty. He lets himself think it. 

“Richard,” he — Jared, nobody else — says. His voice is raspy with the early hours of the morning, layered with colors and gravel, and it makes Richard want to hold on tighter. 

“Hm?” he answers. Eloquent. Concise.

Jared doesn’t answer and Richard gets it. Fucking terrifying, he all of a sudden gets it. There’s a lunge in his chest like someone just threw a lawn chair with him strapped to it off a roof and into a pool. Richard’s drowning in a way his mind can’t seem to define and he’s gripping tighter onto Jared.

“Oh,” he says. A hand crawls around to the back of his neck. “Oh,” he — Richard — says. A light flickers somewhere. He tastes the remnants of blood in his mouth. “Oh,” he says, a third time, settling into the gravitational shift that’s just occurred in his gut and burrowing into it like a well-worn and well-loved sweater. 

It squeezes him like — much like Jared is right now; an arm around his shoulder, wide blue eyes trained on him with inexplicable tears blurring their edges. Richard feels something hot streak down his own cheek.

He understands it just as little as Richard does, this — this. Richard shakes his head, tries to maybe slot some things into place, but his eyes just keep falling back onto the Cruising poster in his room; bright hot colors against an eggshell white wall. 

There’s a rumble of thunder outside — heat lighting, no doubt — and Richard burrows into Jared and breathes. He’s a man of science and numbers and empirical data. Religion and spirituality have little room in his life. But he clings to Jared that night and — and the night after. And the one after that. 

Multidimensional existence is something that isn’t — it hasn’t been disproved. And who’s to say it isn’t real? Richard can’t. He’s not a physicist. He posits that if he exists in a thousand different worlds though, if there’s some other sad sack version of him out there, he just — he sighs.

He hopes Jared is there too.


End file.
